Caracas Chronicles

• Nine-year-old Jeannys Herrera, a patient at the pediatric nephrology unit of the J.M. de los Ríos Hospital has died. She’s the third patient to die in the last ten days. In 2021, 12 children and teenagers died at this hospital because of negligence. 
  • The director of NGO Prepara Familia Katherine Martínez has denounced numerous times that the hospital’s deplorable conditions put the patients’ right to life at risk. 

Read more about the situation of children waiting for organ transplants: No Answers for Dying Kids

• “I’m going to vote on November 21st, it’s a decision that’s more than clear for me,” said former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who called on citizens to participate in the elections because “we have to use this constitutional right, despite the foul play.” 
  • Primero Justicia doesn’t know the exact situation with their spot on the ballot and if they can have candidates. He said it was urgent to define unitary candidacies, which should use the MUD spot on the ballot but was suspended in 2018 and recently reactivated. 
  • Capriles asked to “speak clearly to the people, because political change and the rescue of democracy won’t happen overnight” and insisted that even if they lose, the opposition should participate for two reasons: breaking the inertia and taking advantage of having two trusted names on the CNE’s board of authorities, Enrique Márquez and Roberto Picón. 
  • He supported Carlos Ocariz for the Miranda governorship, said that he wanted to travel all over the country to support local leaders and emphasized that there’s a fake opposition, another slap in the face for the prêt-à-porter opposition, which found out today that Stalin González (Un Nuevo Tiempo) had indeed been invited to Mexico. 

Read more about Venezuela’s political landscape during this new negotiation: This Is the Venezuela That’s Heading Into a New Negotiation Cycle

• On Wednesday, Norway’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the regime and the opposition are starting a new negotiation cycle and that both parties are at “the end of the exploratory conversations, with the goal of starting the negotiation in Mexico.”
  • Tomás Guanipa stepped down from his post as a representative of the caretaker government in Colombia to participate in the negotiation, representing Primero Justicia. He could be joined by Carlos Vecchio and Mariela Magallanes, led by Gerardo Blyde. 

• A document of the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, declassified on August 11th but dating back to June, indicated that “the potential cases that could probably arise from an investigation on the situation would be admissible on the ground of inaction,” which means that the lack of investigation by the State makes the ICC competent to take the case. 
  • The office hasn’t issued a statement yet, but the document shows that most of the Venezuelan prosecutor’s strategy has failed in its goal of stopping the preliminary phase of the investigation. 

• Deputies of Maduro’s Assembly, who allegedly lead a commission of the peace, dialogue, and reconciliation, met with CNE board members to “know and evaluate the guarantees” of the November election. 
• Maduro’s Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza, suggested the ICC hold an investigation because of the independent UN experts’ verdict saying that the economic sanctions “are a punishment on the innocent population.” 
• The mayor of Píritu municipality María Lastra Arévalo died in a car crash on the Morón-Falcón highway. PSUV candidate for the same municipality, Yolfran Cuauro Barroso was driving. He sustained minor injuries. 

The PAHO estimates that the first shipment of COVAX vaccines will arrive in late August, with doses of CoronaVac. The director of emergencies, Ciro Ugarte, added that Sinopharm vaccines will arrive later. 

• Lawyers and family members of political prisoner Freddy Guevara insisted on asking for medical attention because he’s presenting health complications of a cardiac arrhythmia that after beating COVID-19. 
• After three years in prison and without an investigation on the tortures they’ve been subjected to, political prisoners Captain Luis de la Sotta and the rest of the men implicated in the alleged Operation Armageddon, a military court ordered the start of their trial. The operation was an alleged plan to overthrow Maduro. 
• A court sentenced José Alberto Cedeño and José Zorrilla to 29 years in jail, for the murder of Ángela Aguirre, which occurred in Bolívar in 2019. Ángela was also a victim of sexual abuse. The judge didn’t sentence the other five people charged in the case. The family will appeal.